But assertion has been made by Israel since beginning of war, and while new aid group says it has fed over 2 million meals this week, that has only amounted to 40 trucks-worth of aid
A senior Israeli defense official briefing reporters on Friday asserted that Hamas is losing control of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, as the new Israeli-backed aid initiative ramps up its operations aimed at preventing the terror group from diverting aid.
The assertion that Hamas’s grip in the Strip is slipping has been made repeatedly by Israeli officials since the beginning of the war.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation announced Friday that it had distributed over two million meals at three distribution sites in southern and central Gaza over the past five days. But its classification of meals is based on boxes of dry food products that still require cooking equipment or community kitchens, which are very limited throughout the Strip after nearly 20 months of devastating conflict.
The two million meals came from 23,040 boxes of food GHF said it had distributed this week. But this amounts to around just 40 trucks worth of aid when international organizations have asserted that aid from at least 300 trucks needs to be distributed each day in order to fend off famine in Gaza after Israel blocked aid from entering the Strip for 78 days.
Still, the Israeli defense official was bullish about the tide turning against Hamas while briefing reporters Friday on condition of anonymity.
“The residents of the Strip voted with their feet against Hamas and flocked en masse to the distribution centers, thereby breaking an initial barrier of public fear from Hamas, which undermines its governing component needed to preserve its ruling capabilities,” the official said.
According to the official, the new aid distribution system is intended first to cut Hamas off from the aid — as it is no longer involved in the distribution process — and secondly to cut the population off from Hamas, potentially collapsing the terror group’s civil rule in the Strip, which is one of Israel’s war goals.
“Elements in Gaza and within Hamas are trying to create chaos and disorder to sabotage our efforts and drive a psychological campaign and generate a false narrative,” the official added.
Of the 238 trucks of aid that set out from Kerem Shalom to be distributed in Gaza in recent days, 135 were looted, according to military estimates. The looting was largely carried out by civilians, and in some cases, armed gangs who had no affiliation with Hamas, the military official said, underlining the terror group’s weakened control.
According to the official, to enable the UN to collect and distribute the aid entering Gaza, the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) held meetings with UN officials, and several adjustments were made to the transportation routes — some of which had gone through combat zones — and other logistical solutions were provided.
Still, COGAT has accused the UN of failing to collect over 550 truckloads of aid waiting on the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom Crossing.
UN officials and aid groups say they have faced significant challenges distributing the aid because of insecurity, the risk of looting and Israel’s failure to provide safe routes for them to pick up the aid at the border and then ferry it to warehouses ahead of distribution.
‘The hungriest place on earth’
A spokesperson for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA held his own briefing with reporters on Friday in Geneva during which he described Gaza as “the hungriest place on Earth.”
“It’s the only defined area — a country or defined territory within a country — where you have the entire population at risk of famine. 100 percent of the population at risk of famine,” said Jens Laerke, rejecting claims to the contrary by Israeli authorities.
Laerke said 900 trucks of humanitarian aid had been authorized by Israel to enter the Strip since the blockade was partially lifted last week.
But so far only 600 trucks have been offloaded on the Gaza side of the border, and a smaller number of truckloads have then been picked up, due to multiple security considerations.
Laerke said the mission to deliver aid was “in an operational strait-jacket that makes it one of the most obstructed aid operations not only in the world today, but in recent history.”
Once truckloads enter Gaza, they are often “swarmed by desperate people,” Laerke said.
“I don’t blame them, for one second, for taking the aid that essentially is already theirs — but it’s not distributed in the way we want.”
Taking aim at GHF, Laerke said that by having people collect aid rather than delivering it to them where they are, they become a target for looters once they leave the site.
14 said killed amid dozens of IDF airstrikes
Meanwhile, on Friday, hospital officials and paramedics said Friday that Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed at least 14 more people and wounded others.
Officials at Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza said the bodies of 12 people, including three women, were brought in Friday from the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said the bodies of two people, as well as nine others who were wounded, were taken to Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City. It said one of the wounded is a doctor who works at the same hospital.
The IDF said it struck dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip, which included terror operatives, buildings used by terror groups, observation and sniper posts, tunnels and other terror infrastructure.
During recent operations of the 98th Division in the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip, the IDF said it demolished a kilometer-long Hamas tunnel.
The tunnel was discovered by the Commando Brigade and the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit, amid a new offensive against Hamas.
Hamas separately published an unusual video purporting to show its operatives detonating an explosive device against what it says are “undercover” Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza’s Rafah.
The Friday video shows a group of armed men in civilian clothing being hit by a bomb.
Some reports from Gaza indicated that the armed group is affiliated with Yasser Abu Shabab, a leader of a large clan in the Rafah area.
Abu Shabab claims his forces have been protecting aid convoys, while Hamas has accused him of looting the aid trucks and maintaining connections with Israel.
Israeli officials declined to comment on Abu Shabab’s or other militias’ activities in Gaza.
Also on Friday, Haaretz reported that the primary activity of Israeli forces in Gaza has become the systemic destruction of infrastructure. The IDF says it is being done in order to protect soldiers, adding that Hamas is using much of the infrastructure for military purposes, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has talked about destroying homes in Gaza so that civilians have nowhere to return, making it easier to advance US President Donald Trump’s mass emigration plan. Netanyahu last week made implementing Trump’s plan a condition for ending the war.
According to Hamas’s health ministry, more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Strip since the terror group stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
The Hamas death tolls cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the Hamas onslaught.
